IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/333.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Household Division of Labor, Partnerships and Children: Evidence from Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Almudena Sevilla-Sanz
  • Jose Ignacio Gimenez
  • Jose Alberto Molina

Abstract

This paper complements conventional economic analysis and presents a social norms interpretation to explain cross-country differences in partnership formation rates, and the dramatic decrease in partnership formation rates in Southern Europe in particular. We argue that increases in female human capital - by raising the opportunity cost of entering a partnership - had a differential impact on partnership formation rates in Northern and Southern Europe due to the different social norms regarding the household division of labor. Social norms are modeled as a constraint on the allocation of household labor that (if binding) diminishes the gains to enter a partnership. Furthermore, highly educated women are less likely to form a partnership, because the utility loss when a partnership is formed is lower the higher the female opportunity cost. We test the predictions of the model using 7 waves of the European Community Household panel (1995-2001). For each country and year we construct the average of the female to male ratio of childcare time as an indicator of social norms regarding the household division of labor. The empirical findings support the predictions of the model. After controlling for the time and country variation in the data, as well as for permanent individual heterogeneity and other aggregate variables at the country level, the results suggest that more traditional social norms regarding the household division of labor negatively affect a woman`s probability of forming a partnership. Thus, a woman living in a country with a more traditional division of household labor has, ceteris paribus, a lower probability of forming a partnership. Furthermore, as predicted by the theory, social norms have a stronger negative effect for highly educated women. To the extent that female education has increased over the years, and that Southern European countries have more traditional social norms, this latter finding may partly explain the dramatic decrease in partnership formation rates in Southern Europe.

Suggested Citation

  • Almudena Sevilla-Sanz & Jose Ignacio Gimenez & Jose Alberto Molina, 2007. "Household Division of Labor, Partnerships and Children: Evidence from Europe," Economics Series Working Papers 333, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:333
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9db4b522-94ec-4197-8da6-83aa048c236f
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David S. Loughran, 2002. "The Effect Of Male Wage Inequality On Female Age At First Marriage," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(2), pages 237-250, May.
    2. Paola Giuliano, 2007. "Living Arrangements in Western Europe: Does Cultural Origin Matter?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(5), pages 927-952, September.
    3. Raquel Fernández & Alessandra Fogli, 2006. "Fertility: The Role of Culture and Family Experience," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(2-3), pages 552-561, 04-05.
    4. Charles F. Manski, 2000. "Economic Analysis of Social Interactions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 115-136, Summer.
    5. Gilbert Ghez & Gary S. Becker, 1975. "A Theory of the Allocation of Time and Goods Over the Life Cycle," NBER Chapters, in: The Allocation of Time and Goods over the Life Cycle, pages 1-45, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Alícia Adserà, 2004. "Changing fertility rates in developed countries. The impact of labor market institutions," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 17(1), pages 17-43, February.
    7. Grossbard-Shechtman, Shoshana Amyra, 1984. "A Theory of Allocation of Time in Markets for Labour and Marriage," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 94(376), pages 863-882, December.
    8. Gonzalez, Libertad, 2007. "The effect of benefits on single motherhood in Europe," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 393-412, June.
    9. Scott Drewianka, 2003. "Estimating Social Effects in Matching Markets: Externalities in Spousal Search," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(2), pages 409-423, May.
    10. Franco Peracchi, 2002. "The European Community Household Panel: A review," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 63-90.
    11. Shelly Lundberg & Robert A. Pollak, 1996. "Bargaining and Distribution in Marriage," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 139-158, Fall.
    12. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2004. "Subjective Outcomes in Economics," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(1), pages 1-11, July.
    13. Juster, F Thomas & Stafford, Frank P, 1991. "The Allocation of Time: Empirical Findings, Behavioral Models, and Problems of Measurement," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(2), pages 471-522, June.
    14. Robert D. Retherford & Naohiro Ogawa & Rikiya Matsukura, 2001. "Late Marriage and Less Marriage in Japan," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 27(1), pages 65-102, March.
    15. Almudena Sevilla-Sanz, 2007. "Division of Household Labor and Cross-Country Differences in Household Formation Rates," Economics Series Working Papers 325, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    16. Joni Hersch & Leslie S. Stratton, 2002. "Housework and Wages," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 37(1), pages 217-229.
    17. Tomas Frejka & Gérard Calot, 2001. "Cohort Reproductive Patterns in Low‐Fertility Countries," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 27(1), pages 103-132, March.
    18. Moulton, Brent R, 1990. "An Illustration of a Pitfall in Estimating the Effects of Aggregate Variables on Micro Unit," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 334-338, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. J. Gimenez-Nadal & Jose Molina & Almudena Sevilla-Sanz, 2012. "Social norms, partnerships and children," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 215-236, June.
    2. Wencke Gwozdz & Alfonso Sousa-Poza, 2010. "Explaining Gender Differences in Housework Time in Germany," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 183-200, June.
    3. Calvo, Elena, 2021. "Determinantes del Emprendimiento Femenino en Europa [Determinants of Female Entrepreneurship in Europe]," MPRA Paper 111121, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. J. Gimenez-Nadal & Jose Molina & Almudena Sevilla-Sanz, 2012. "Social norms, partnerships and children," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 215-236, June.
    2. Almudena Sevilla-Sanz, 2007. "Division of Household Labor and Cross-Country Differences in Household Formation Rates," Economics Series Working Papers 325, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    3. Almudena Sevilla-Sanz, 2005. "Social Effects, Household Time Allocation, and the Decline in Union Formation: Working Paper 2005-07," Working Papers 16517, Congressional Budget Office.
    4. Sevilla-Sanz, Almudena & De Laat, Joost, 2006. "Working women, men’s home time and lowest-low fertility," ISER Working Paper Series 2006-23, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    5. Miriam Marcén & Marina Morales, 2019. "Live together: does culture matter?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 671-713, June.
    6. Joni Hersch, 2009. "Home production and wages: evidence from the American Time Use Survey," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 159-178, June.
    7. Delia Furtado & Miriam Marcén & Almudena Sevilla, 2013. "Does Culture Affect Divorce? Evidence From European Immigrants in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(3), pages 1013-1038, June.
    8. J. Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal & José Alberto Molina & Yu Zhu, 2018. "Intergenerational mobility of housework time in the United Kingdom," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 911-937, December.
    9. Almudena Sevilla-Sanz & Delia Furtado and Miriam Marcen, 2010. "Does Culture Affect Divorce Decisions? Evidence from European Immigrants in the US," Economics Series Working Papers 495, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    10. Ekert-Jaffe, Olivia & Grossbard, Shoshana, 2008. "Does community property discourage unpartnered births?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 25-40, March.
    11. Campaña, Juan Carlos & Gimenez-Nadal, J. Ignacio & Molina, José Alberto, 2015. "Gender differences in the distribution of total work-time of Latin- American families: the importance of social norms," MPRA Paper 62759, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Sonia Oreffice, 2014. "Culture and Household Decision Making. Balance of Power and Labor Supply Choices of US-Born and Foreign-Born Couples," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 162-184, June.
    13. J. Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal & Jose Alberto Molina & Raquel Ortega, 2017. "Like my parents at home? Gender differences in children’s housework in Germany and Spain," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 1143-1179, June.
    14. Almudena Sevilla-Sanz, 2010. "Household division of labor and cross-country differences in household formation rates," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(1), pages 225-249, January.
    15. Sonia Oreffice & Climent Quintana-Domeque, 2012. "A Matter of Weight? The Role of Spouses. Physical Attractiveness on Hours of Work," CHILD Working Papers Series 7, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
    16. Marcén, Miriam & Molina, José Alberto & Morales, Marina, 2018. "The effect of culture on the fertility decisions of immigrant women in the United States," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 15-28.
    17. Núria Rodríguez‐Planas, 2018. "Mortgage finance and culture," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 786-821, September.
    18. Eugene Choo & Shannon Seitz & Aloysius Siow, 2008. "The Collective Marriage Matching Model: Identification, Estimation and Testing," Working Papers tecipa-340, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    19. Kasey Buckles & Melanie Guldi & Joseph Price, 2011. "Changing the Price of Marriage: Evidence from Blood Test Requirements," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 46(3), pages 539-567.
    20. Diego Marino Fages, 2023. "Migration and trust: Evidence on assimilation from internal migrants," Discussion Papers 2023-08, Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Marriage Market; Gender Roles; Household Labor;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • I29 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:333. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anne Pouliquen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.